Sometimes in the open sea there are so-called inland waves, which are invisible on the water surface and cover almost the entire thickness of the ocean. Such waves are called internal physicist-oceanologist, sector head of the Institute of Applied Physics. Alexei Slyunyaev, Professor of Basic Mathematics at the National Research University Higher School of Economics, AV Gaponov-Grekhov Academy of Sciences.
These waves arise due to the “mixing” of water in the ocean. The water column in the ocean is heterogeneous: water is warmer from above, already colder from below, therefore there is a temperature gradient (soft fall) and a corresponding density gradient, that is, water is lighter from above, heavier from below.
“And imagine: for some reason, the heavy liquid came out higher than it should have. Of course it will want to go back, and on its way back it will produce wave movements in the water column. In this case, it may turn out that there will be no manifestations of these movements on the sea surface. Under favorable conditions, enormous internal waves arise. “They can reach a height of half a kilometer and cover almost the entire thickness of the ocean,” he said.
The oceanographer noted that it is generally known that inland waves are produced near Gibraltar. They are visible from space because of the currents they create on the surface, which change the pattern of wind surface waves.
“Since many models describing these waves are widely used in physics, it turns out that the solutions we obtained for internal waves in the ocean can also be applied in other environments: layered solids, plasma, including astrophysics, etc. So, they describe not only phenomena in the sea, but also, for example, in outer space,” the scientist concluded.
For more information on deadly waves, what types of tsunamis are there, under what conditions they can occur on the Moscow River, and how the weather affects the probability of dangerous waves, see. report “socialbites.ca”.